However, when Brad Bird was brought into the fold with The Incredibles, the “human” character finally seemed to be freed from this "uncanny valley" they were headed toward, with more exaggerated, more truly animated characterizations taking over. It was a very welcome development, as far as I'm concerned. Now, with your picture, you've headed more into stylized caricature, with characters who move with more fluidity and elasticity than ever before — even Carl, your elderly hero. You've done some wonderful things with the designs of these people. Carl — as you pointed out — seems to have taken on this blocky shape over the course of his life, from his head, which seems to be bigger than the entirety of Russell's body, to his hands, while Russell is more circular in shape. . . .
Yeah, exactly. Which posed its own design challenges. [Pointing to some illustrations in the soon-to-be-published book, The Art of Up, which he’s brought along.] This is the first drawing of Carl where he’s all green and stuff, and then we sort of hit on this — these were some drawings that I did a long time ago — these squared-off shapes. I just felt like Carl is sort of stuck in his ways, he’s locked in his house, he’s just a big square, you know? So we came up with this basic shape language, where everyone else is these kind of circular and, of course, triangular shapes, but Carl is this block.
I’m really waiting for that one film, where you guys take that creative, risky plunge and dive into more of an illustrative style like what you've experimented with in the end titles for films like Ratatouille. . .
I know. Wouldn’t that be cool? Some of the Lou Romano stuff, when he does these really graphic – like The Incredibles title sequence, or what we did on Monsters, Inc., with the doors at the beginning. That would be so cool. Some day . . .
Is there any push to do it?
Well. . . .
You've done it in shorts, like Your Friend the Rat, the one that was created for the Ratatouille DVD.
Right. Well, I think there’s an understandable nervousness. . . .
Well, with audiences expecting the now-traditional CG look. . . .
Yeah, I guess there’s that, but then also too, the idea that: will people accept something for as long as a feature? I think the sort of thinking is — and not just at Pixar — but the kind of common thinking amongst most of Hollywood is that it’s okay for a short to go really super-stylized, but for a feature, people want a little more sort of “believability,” but I’m not sure that that’s necessarily true.
Just look at what Chuck Jones was doing later in his career, getting more and more stylized. . . .
Yeah!
. . . . doing just wonderful work.
Yeah! Heck, I think if people will accept a sock with ping-pong balls on it for a whole feature, you can kind of go and, I think, as long as the emotion is there. . . we were trying to push, to some degree, the stylization on this film.
